


What Now, What Then, What Lasts

by Peapods



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-24
Updated: 2010-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin makes an unexpected visit to Hogwarts in a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey turn of events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Now, What Then, What Lasts

They wake up one morning and the Whomping Willow is gone. In its place is a dazed-looking, weedy teenager with sticky-out ears. He's wearing clothing no Muggle or wizard would be caught in and he stares at the group of fifth and sixth years headed to Hagrid's hut as though he's never quite seen anything like them.

"Huh," he says.

"Um," Harry says.

"Merlin," he introduces himself.

"Not an oak, then?" asks Luna.

*****

He's not at all intimidating. He's fairly skinny actually. Maybe a few years older than Harry, but an eternal youth in his expression and the delighted, demented grin on his face. He's bobbing his head violently to the music that Dean has put on and his limbs thrash in a manner that has Ginny reaching for breakable objects in the vicinity. He's lost his kerchief in the ensuing paroxysms.

They questioned him at first, but stopped taking him seriously after he called King Arthur "an utter prat" and intimated that the dragon under Camelot was having him on most of the time.

Each House had tried to commandeer him, which seemed to startle him even more than the fact that he was over a thousand years away from where he should have been. In the end, he told them he'd spend a little time in each.

The Gryffindors had got him first.

"This music is brilliant," he says breathlessly as the song winds to an end. "Influence from the non-magic folk?" He doesn't use the word "muggle." When it had been explained to him what that was, he had scowled enormously and reminded them all, with a bit of the power he's more known for, that he serves a man without magic who has managed to be a great man despite the lack. They don't use the word so much now.

"Yeah, rock and roll," Dean explains before launching into a lecture about rhythm and blues and pop and the eternal question of the Rolling Stones versus The Beatles and Led Zeppelin versus The Who and how the whole argument is rubbish since they're not comparable.

"Arthur would love this," he says. He says that quite a bit and Harry gets the feeling he's trying to record every detail precisely to memory so he can tell Arthur.

No one has had the guts to ask him to do magic yet. Harry has noticed, he knows Hermione has as well, that he's very circumspect on the subject.

While he and Dean continue to talk about music and dancing and are somehow coming up on how he can smuggle a guitar back home, Harry winds his way to Hermione, who is in a corner, nose--ubiquitously--stuck in a book.

"He seems so..."

"Young?" Hermione asks. "Even Merlin had to be young once, Harry."

"No, I mean, yes he is, but it's the way he talks about Arthur, you know?"

Hermione nods and sits back. "We have elevated Merlin above him, of course we have. He was the most powerful sorcerer of his time and probably all time before and after. But for him it's different. First, it appears he had to hide his magic while Uther was still alive."

"Hide? Merlin?"

"Yes," she nods. "Uther had _quite_ the distaste for magic. Second, he was not high born, not even supernaturally born. He was just a little boy in a little village who thought he could find a better life in Camelot. He's a servant, Harry. That is how he sees himself. Not in the degrading sense, but he serves Arthur, willingly it seems, and with great pride."

"He talks about him like the only reason he exists is to make Arthur King, to make him--"

"The greatest King Britain would ever know," Hermione nods. "He had a duty greater than his own selfish desires, one he took seriously." She stares at him, a strange gleam in her eyes. "It's not such a remarkable thing. Or maybe it is, but I can understand how he feels."

*****

Luna thinks perhaps she could be great friends with him. They're both a little odd looking and have a serious love for pudding. Her housemates seem fairly put out that he spends most of his time with her.

"There's something about you, Luna, I just can't put my finger on it," he says, before laughing a little, as though at a private joke. But it's not malicious, so Luna allows herself a small smile.

"You are not very open with your magic," she states to him one morning. They are the only ones up, he because he's usually up with the sun and she because someone stole her blankets in the night and it really is quite cold, and the grounds are frozen solid under their feet. He's not accepted their offers of clothing except for a warm cloak.

He shrugs, "The when I come from isn't a very good time to be a sorcerer." He doesn't refer to himself as a wizard. Luna assumes this is a peculiarity of his removal in time.

"Magic users are persecuted?"

He snorts, "That is one word for it, I suppose. Actually, it's a capital offense."

"And yet you work in the royal household."

He nods. He doesn't elaborate. Luna thinks of tales of his devotion to Arthur. Thinks of her own devotion to another.

"Well, I suppose I can understand that, then," she says finally. He looks at her and smiles.

"You'd be the first. I don't know whether that makes you as odd as me or as rational as me."

"Very likely it is the former," she says matter-of-factly. He laughs and her cheeks heat.

Yes, being his friend might have been something quite extraordinary.

*****

"I'm not very good at this game," he tells Draco and while his tone is apologetic, there is amusement in his eyes. Like he is looking at Draco and seeing someone else.

It is exceedingly off-putting.

"Well, it's either you or the enormous idiots sitting over there converting oxygen to carbon dioxide, so I'll take what I can get." The grin on his face only grows.

"You're a bit of a prat, aren't you?" he asks, but there is so much amusement and something like affection in his voice that Draco doesn't immediately de-ball him for the insult.

"I prefer to call it superiority."

He laughs and claps his hands as though Draco has told a great joke and he can do little more but roll his eyes and make the first move. Minutes later, Draco can't believe that the greatest wizard in history is so shite at a game of strategy.

"Arthur despairs of me ever learning strategy," he says when his queen is destroyed in a rather epic and dramatic manner. He doesn't seem put out at all that he's taken only three or four of Draco's pieces. "Says I haven't got the sense nature gave foot fungus then sends me off to do his laundry."

Draco is given the impression that the Arthur of legend is a bit of a shit and says so. This sends the man into a fair epilepsy of laughter. He sobers suddenly and the longing on his face forces Draco to look away. In the tales, in the invoking of his name, they have endowed this man with so much power and authority. Sitting across from him is an awkward gangly boy with too long limbs with not enough fat or muscle to cover them and sticky-out ears. He's not cryptic, he's not crotchety, he's not tottering with a giant staff nor is he surrounded with mysticism. He looks like any one of them. A bit older perhaps, a little less well-nourished. Hands worn from honest work Draco has never had to do, clothes worn from continued use, face and attitude unencumbered by the will to be older and more mature.

He's comfortable with who he is because he doesn't know what he becomes. Most of all, he looks like he's missing his best friend.

"Why haven't you magicked yourself back?" Draco asks. The boy blushes, astonishingly high cheekbones alight.

"I, uh, don't really know how."

The Slytherin Common Room, which has been watching them like one of them is going to burst into flame, lets out a collective gasp. His blush only deepens.

"I'm actually a bit rubbish at magic sometimes. I really don't know how I got here, besides, you know, the tree, so I'm not entirely certain how to get back. That old bloke is giving it a right crack and if he's anything like Gaius I'm sure he'll come up with something."

Draco isn't sure whether to be appalled that Merlin's not doing his own research or that the greatest wizard of all time--he should just capitalize it and put a copyright on it if his inner monologue is going to insist on using the term--is bollocks at actual magic.

"Don't worry, Draco," he suddenly says. "One day, you'll find someone who will gladly drink poison to save your life and will still call you a prat."

It's the most reassuring thing anyone has ever told him.

*****

Merlin finds himself having the best time with the Hufflepuffs, as they call themselves. He thinks it's a bit rubbish that these kids have been divided up along something as subjective and arbitrary as personality traits. His best friend in the world would have been a Gryffindor and he a Hufflepuff and they wouldn't have been nearly as close, he thinks.

He knows all the kids have been practically wetting themselves for the chance to ask him questions, but the Hufflepuffs are the only ones who are only secondarily interested in that. They teach him games and show him their spells and don't require much from him except to be their captive audience. And that he can do quite well. He doesn't even have to fake it as is often the case with Arthur. He gets the impression that Hufflepuffs are a little looked down upon in the whole House system and doesn't understand that at all. Loyalty and hard work, to Merlin, are two personality traits that he can't see much fault with.

They try to get him on a broom and they dare him to go into the Forbidden Forest, but he grumbles about heights and giant baby rats and they let it go. They teach him Exploding Snap and when Quidditch comes around he's cheering as hard for the Hufflepuff team as anyone else in the House. One of the girls even knits him a yellow and black scarf that he wears proudly. If they ask questions, they ask very _careful_ questions.

Every student has been very cautious not to let him know anything about his future once it gets around that his Arthur is _Prince_ Arthur, royal prat and future king (the first time he heard someone exclaim "Merlin's beard!" he resolved to stay clean shaven for the rest of his life or die trying). They tell him how things are and he gets the impression that Camelot is no more, but there has been so much upheaval in the intervening years that this isn't much of a stretch.

But it still causes a great pang that he can only attribute to naivete. Or Arthur.

*****

All the spells the scholars at this school try to teach him are in a language he's never heard before. They gave him a bit of a spell to make the words they were saying make sense, but the spells themselves are still absolutely foreign to Merlin's ears. He remembers tales of the Romans, but they never managed to penetrate very far into Ealdor. Certainly not enough for their language to catch on.

Most of head scholars appear quite intimidated by him, which is just laughable. He hasn't been able to so much as magic up a cup of ale. They introduce him to something called "tea" and it's all right. A bit bitter, but made quite palatable with a little milk and something called "sugar" which is a little easier to work with than honey.

Professor Snape is, perhaps, the only one who doesn't look at him with a particular awe. Rather, his stares are scrutinizing, rather more like Uther than Merlin is entirely comfortable with.

"You have protected your sovereign from many foes," the professor guesses one night.

"I try," Merlin says, shrugging. He can't help feeling that whatever he has done he has not done enough. Arthur still suffers, still has heartache that Merlin has not been able to spare him.

"You hide, taking no credit, only working toward a future that is in no way assured?"

Merlin wonders if Professor Snape isn't a little bit psychic.

"How do you bear it?"

And Merlin wonders if Professor Snape isn't a little bit like him, actually.

He shrugs. "He is Arthur. He has a future no matter what, if I can keep him alive. I do what little I can to make sure that his future is great, that he is great. The capacity is there, he just needs... encouragement. I bear it because I know that whatever comes after him has got to be better than what is and what came before."

Snape's face is blank, but if Merlin followed his line of sight he knew he'd find, as he had every other time he'd done so, that Snape was stealing looks at Harry Potter.

*****

They find a way back on a completely innocuous Wednesday afternoon. He's been in the Headmaster's office all morning when the small Charms professor and the Ancient Runes--he's a bit miffed, they aren't _that_ ancient--professor come falling through the door waving a bit of parchment in one hand and their wands in the other.

"Got it! Found it in Protlot the Portly's recipes for flank steak," Flitwick says. Dumbledore takes the parchment and after a quick skim, smiles. He holds the parchment in his deformed hand and brandishes his wand.

"So it is, and quite simple as well. Well, Merlin, I think we can bid you adieu as soon as you are ready."

Merlin thinks about all the new friends he's made and hopes that, for as much as they look up to his older self, he, young and impetuous, has been able to impart some kind of wisdom.

"Right, I'd better get back. Who knows what kind of trouble Arthur's gotten himself into in my absence."

"Well, we can put you down very close to the time you were imprisoned in the tree. Shouldn't be a problem."

"Right, then, do it."

*****

Hogwarts goes back to normal. For the most part. One thing that is different is that every portrait of Merlin has now mysteriously lost his ubiquitous beard. Second, almost every portrait now contains another man with bright features, a crown upon his head and his arm around Merlin's shoulder. Some find this peculiar or amusing. Others seem to understand the import of the new addition a little better. Professor Snape has been seen, late at night by curfew-breakers, in the fourth hallway off the fifth corridor on the eighth floor of the westernmost turret, staring at one such portrait. Draco Malfoy has become further introverted and more snappish. Luna Lovegood is ever so much more lonelier. And Harry Potter still has not learned.

He will, but that is his own journey and not even the most famous wizard in history can make it any easier.


End file.
